Islamists close to seizing Libya’s oil
Egypt has warned that militant groups are poised to seize control of Libya’s oilfields, as the country’s foreign minister appealed for an expansion of the Western-led campaign against Daesh to tackle extremism threatening North Africa.
Sameh Shukri, the Egyptian
foreign minister, used a visit to London on Monday to push for a new
approach from Britain and the West to Islamist violence in Egypt and its
neighbours, modelled on the campaign targeting the Daesh.
“The natural resources in
Libya represents a very large pool of wealth and funding that will fund
terrorist activity not only there but in other parts of the world,” he
told The Daily Telegraph.
“You see [Daesh] in Iraq
utilising petrol and the black market and in Libya this is a danger that
will have a big impact for us.”
Source: gulfnews.com
Six months after the Egyptian leader, Abdul
Fattah Al Sissi, was elected president following the removal of the
Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Mursi, Shukri said the organisation was
behind violence similar to Daesh in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in North
Africa.
Egypt has supported the
Libyan government against Islamist militias that now control most of the
country’s big cities and large swathes of territory, though not yet the
oilfields.
“We have a
struggle against similar organisations that are an offshoot of other
terrorist ideologies like the [Muslim] Brotherhood and all these
organisations support each other. We have seen terrorists from Daesh
move from Iraq and Syria to Sinai, even Nigeria. The interconnected
nature of all these organisations has to be recognised.”
Given the shared ideological
roots of the Muslim Brotherhood and violent Islamist movements, Shukri
said the fight could not be won in Iraq and Syria alone.
“All of us attempting the
eradication of a terrorist organisation in one area will need to have
greater cooperation in another if we are to comprehensively deal with
this threat,” he said.
Egypt has welcomed Downing
Street’s decision to commission a report into the scope of Muslim
Brotherhood activities both in the UK and around the world, as the
post-revolutionary government seeks the isolation of its strongest
rival.
Although the document will
not be published until the end of the year, leaks have indicated that
Britain will take action against Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups where
there are suspicions of financing or involvement with suspicious
activities abroad.
Al Sissi has declared the
Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group, although it has said it is
peaceful and rejected links to the attacks. Shukri said Britain should
aim at the group’s finances, organisational structures and “ability to
continue to promote violence extremism”.
He pressed Philip Hammond,
the Foreign Secretary, to increase cooperation over “common security
threats” over lunch at Carlton House Terrace yesterday and later met
with cross-party groups in the House of Commons.
After 33 members of the
security forces were killed last week by attacks on the Sinai Peninsula
blamed on the Ansar Beit Al Maqdis group, Hammond promised to intensify
cooperation with the Cairo government.
Source: gulfnews.com
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